Repeating the community council's official "no comment" about the Freedomites' fast, Krestova's Walter Ostricoff explains: "They don't belong to us. They belong to [John J. Verigin] and Gilpin."

They feel shame for popular Doukhobor choirs that performed at Expo 86 and this year are going abroad. Doukhobor music, say the Freedomites, is for worship, not show business.

They broke away, came to Gilpin, and last August went to the Doukhobor Heritage Centre near Grand Forks where they stripped and set fire to the building.

The violence by zealots is nothing like the widely publicized anarchy in the West Kootenay region during the '20s, '50s or early '60s but it still amounts to more than the occasional fire.

RCMP Cpl. Jim Delnea of the nearby Nelson detachment says dynamite bombs are sometimes still set off on railway tracks, apparently by Freedomite "night workers."

The 22 religious families, who live simply in this backwater, make up the only Doukhobor community that supports two women on a hunger strike in a federal prison.

Mary Braun, 66, and Tina Zmaeff, 62, serving the latest of a number of sentences for arson, are in the sixth week of their fast at Matsqui Institution.

It is not the first time the two Sons of Freedom Doukhobors have refused to eat and many of their friends fear it will be their last.

Other Doukhobors feel little pity for the women who they feel, with a few score other members of the radical Freedomite sect, continue to soil their good name.

"Our prayer is for them to assume eating and become human beings," says John J. Verigin, leader of an estimated 30,000 Orthodox Doukhobors.

"They are pursuing a cause through violence that is not justifiable. To me that makes them less than human beings," says the 65-year-old Doukhobor patriarch who lives in nearby Grand Forks.

"I pray that they will come to understand the Doukhobor principle of toil and a peaceful life."

Reform Doukhobors - they are former Freedomites who live in the no-longer-notorious Krestova area 110 kilometres to the east - do not mince words about the women they tried repeatedly to help.

Repeating the community council's official "no comment" about the Freedomites' fast, Krestova's Walter Ostricoff explains: "They don't belong to us. They belong to John Verigin and Gilpin."

But didn't the Reform Doukhobors take in the two women last year, when they were paroled on another arson sentence?

"We tried to be Christians, but they just failed. They went away (to Gilpin) and caused trouble (set fire to a school in Grand Forks). We've got nothing to do with them."

The still-radical Doukhobors of Gilpin believe it is their role to "straighten out" the vast majority of their brethren - co- religionists they say have gone badly astray from 17th-century Russian teachings.

The Freedomites remain vegetarians, claim to be pacifists, try to reject all authority and - to varying degrees, as they admit to being less than perfect - materialism.

When they sing the mournful music of their ancient Russian hymns, the Freedomites say, it is for prayer.

They feel shame for popular Doukhobor choirs that performed at Expo 86 and this year are going abroad. Doukhobor music, say the Freedomites, is for worship, not show business.

For 12-year-old Paulette Savinkoff, seeing a neighbor's house burn while nude women sing in prayer is as normal as is going to school for other children her age.

Paulette, a bright, pretty girl in a blue babushka and floral- print dress, guides a visitor on a village tour of empty lots and charred ruins.

Six of Gilpin's houses have been set to inspirational blaze during the past four years, she points out.

She takes pride in revealing that she has never been to school, but has been taught by her mother and friends to read and write in Russian as well as English.

Two years ago Paulette and other villagers watched Braun and Zmaeff burn down a house. They were sentenced to eight years.

This fire was different from the others in Gilpin because the house was said by the court to belong not to the women themselves, but a young man about to be married.

Peter Slastukin, a village elder, recalls that no one was living in the house at the time of the fire. He says the "previous resident" - the Freedomites insist there is no individual ownership in their community - pleaded with the authorities not to punish the women.

The occupant's mother, with the backing of the entire village, wrote the court to argue unsuccessfully that it was an internal matter for the community to resolve.

"The ladies are our concern alone," Slastukin continues to insist.

The two women were paroled last spring to live under the supervision of the reform Doukhobors in Krestova, where they have relatives.

They broke away, came to Gilpin, and last August went to the Doukhobor Heritage Centre near Grand Forks where they stripped and set fire to the building.

The two zealots came to trial last September on stretchers, emaciated from a 45-day hunger strike, vowing to continue their fast.

Justice Wallace Oppal had to decide whether to risk their lives by sentencing them to more prison time, or endanger the community by releasing them to commit more arson.

They refused to promise to keep the peace and he gave them six months.

Their latest fast, begun Feb. 1, comes after only 30 days of taking food following their last long hunger strike.

"They're not young," says Laura Savinkoff, 36, Paulette's mother. "I think they will starve to death."

They would not be the first. Mary Astaforoff, 71, of Gilpin, died last year after a 54-day prison fast.

In a letter written from prison two weeks ago, the women appealed to all Doukhobors to forsake materialism and private ownership as they recalled their ancestors had done before leaving Russia for Canada nearly 90 years ago.

Why do Freedomites strip and burn?

"It's part of our religion," explains the happy, easy-going Savinkoff. "It is a cleansing of the soul and a rejection of materialism."

She says she has never done it but could. "When the spirit speaks, you don't question it."

Her husband, Peter Savinkoff, has admitted setting fires, on the instructions of Orthodox Doukhobor leader John Verigin, he claims.

Verigin was acquitted in 1979 on four counts of conspiracy to commit arson. He angrily denies all Freedomite claims that he has directed violence.

"We consider him our leader anyway," says Laura Savinkoff.

"We're not mad at him for the denials. He does what he has to do, and we do what he tells us to do."

The Freedomites believe that "when the time is ripe, all will be revealed.

"Failure to follow a leader's instructions, they say, brings a seven-generation curse on their families.

The Freedomite militants deny the contention of Orthodox Doukhobors that they represent a last, dying generation of misguided zealots.

Max Kolesnikoff, 50, says he hasn't yet taken part in nudism or arson.

"But if we have to drop our drawers, anytime, then we'll do it," he promises.

"And I'm not just speaking for the older people. We have men in their twenties who have been arrested."

Concludes Peter Slastukin: "Our forefathers came here from Russia seeking religious freedom. We've never had it.

"We've suffered a lot - needlessly. The government used to jail our folk for three years just for nudism.

"They've done more harm to us than we'll ever do to them. They lose material things, but our people have lost their lives - for religion.

"We're very concerned about the two ladies."